


Between You And Me

by NumptyPylon



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: 5 Things, Drabble Sequence, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Illustrated, Romance, post-S3, post-TTM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:13:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29158707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NumptyPylon/pseuds/NumptyPylon
Summary: Callum finds Rayla alone in a forest in Xadia. Over the next weeks of travel, they find their way back to each other.Screenshot-edit and drabble combo story, trying to evoke season 4.
Relationships: Callum/Rayla (The Dragon Prince)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 61





	Between You And Me

**Author's Note:**

> Trying something new... again! This time, trying to evoke season 4 by combining screenshot edits and drabbles. Hope you enjoy, it's new territory for me to write this short. I posted them separately on my tumblr over the past week or so, but figured I would put them all together here.
> 
> Vague spoilers for Through the Moon, but it's not really necessary to have read the comic.

###### I

  
She was actually there in front of him, and it was all so… normal. She was kneeling in the clearing, bathed in dappled sunlight, picking berries, gathering them onto a curved piece of bark.

She hadn’t seen him and… he was scared this… _this_ would be over when she did. She would leave again, he would lose her, this could be the last he saw of her and… it was so _normal._

And that made him _angry._

“RAYLA!” It slipped out, desperate and furious and… longing.

She dropped the berries, as she jumped to her feet, abruptly snapping around to look at him.

No.

Not normal at all, he could tell now. She was too skinny and her hair too short and her face too full of shock to see her own boyfriend which he definitely still was because she hadn’t broken up with him, just _left_ and… nothing was normal at all or like it was supposed to be, and _she_ had chosen for it to be like this-

“Don’t you dare _leave!”_ he shouted, even though she was just standing there, stunned, not making to leave, but he had been so scared she would, as soon as she saw him.

And now he was just angry at her for something she hadn’t even done yet, because she had also already done it and-

“Callum?” Her voice wasn’t right either.

She looked and sounded so unsure… _scared_.

But then she smiled and looked so sweet and beautiful and… how could she still _do_ that?! Still… do that to… _him_?

But she _did_ still do that to him, and so intensely too, that it was reaching right through the veil of anger to tug at his lips and his heart.

###### II

  
They had walked for hours and she was not looking at him but ahead, so he could pretend it was just regular Callum and Rayla, traipsing through Xadian wilderness… like they were still… connected.

Her hood was up so he couldn’t see the too-short hair and too-sharp jaw and cheekbones and the way she wouldn’t look him in the eyes.

She was tugging her green cloak around herself, shivering. _Too skinny,_ he thought. She never took proper care of herself. Never cared enough about herself to do that. And it couldn’t be on him alone to care about her.

He did though, still, because he wanted to shout at her some more, definitely, but… he also wanted to wrap her up in his cloak, in his arms-

No.

It was no good, that train of thought.

So he kept walking.

He was annoyed she was shivering so much, because it was really distracting. It wasn’t even cold at all today, the sun was out and there was a pleasant breeze-

Oh. Right.

For _him_ it was pleasant, because the wind felt different with a Sky arcanum. The breeze _he_ felt might be… more of a gale, for most people. Yeah, the trees really were moving a lot. Rayla’s cloak whipped around her.

And he had really just been annoyed at her for being cold and miserable, and he didn’t want to be like that, he-

He wanted to wrap her up in whatever he had, to keep her warm and safe, was what he wanted.

 _She_ had decided for them both. He could damn well do that too.

He caught up to her easily, unhindered by the wind, and pulled off his scarf.

She stood very still, when he wrapped it around her neck, and he remembered, suddenly and powerfully, back when they had faced Sol Regem, and he had adjusted his scarf out of pure desperate desire to stall, to keep her with him for just a moment longer.

He had reached for her then, too, as he did now.

But he hadn’t connected then, she had pulled away and he hadn’t pushed.

He pushed now, his hand sliding across her cold cheek and into the short hair, as soft as he remembered.

She didn’t pull away, but slid her own little hand along his jaw to his temple, then into his hair under his ear.

“It’s longer-”

“It’s shorter-”

“I cut mine.”

“I didn’t.”  
  


###### III

  
There were tears in her eyes, precariously teetering at the edge of her long lashes.

They fell with the barest touch of his fingers, as he knew they would. Rayla could never take a gentle touch half as well as she took the hits the world kept levelling at her.

She was looking away, but… she was _staying_. Not pulling away from him like she had so many times before.

“I’m… f-” she gasped, fighting to pull herself together. She was not fine though, not even a little, not even enough to say it. She still _tried,_ because she always did, and certainly never _ever_ went down without a fight.

But she did go down now, crumbling into him like the back of his fingers tracing her cheekbone had been one of those assassin nerve strikes she had told him about.

He didn’t ask what was wrong. _So_ many things were wrong.

 _One_ of them was bubbling over right now, and he didn’t need to know which one just… needed _her_ to know that… it was okay to not be okay. _She_ had said that, but she frequently needed reminding that it was okay to _show_ it, too.

“Rayla, it’s okay.”

He didn’t know if she heard him, but she stayed in the feelings she didn’t want to feel, and in his arms when he wrapped them around her. Her head sank down to his shoulder, her knees down to the snow beneath them.

She _stayed_ down, too, for a long time, unmoving except for the shaking. They couldn’t stay here, on this wind-blown mountaintop, she certainly couldn’t, she was already freezing cold.

He should probably… tell her she had to get up, to get moving. She _would_ get up if he said that, she always got back up. She would get up and get moving and feel shame for having faltered in the first place.

You couldn’t tell someone like Rayla to pull herself together, someone whose whole life had been nothing _but_ pulling herself together, someone who was being pulled apart with all the pulling together she had done.

No, it was _not_ an option, telling her that.

Instead, Callum concentrated, kind of… vibrating the air around them. It wasn’t a spell but some basic manipulation of the elements _underlying_ the spells, affecting tiniest parts of the air.

It was difficult, but… he always did better at magic when his heart was in it.

The thin layer of snow beneath them became sap and then water, seeping away as the air heated, enveloping them in warmth. Just a little pocket of it, but enough to give her time to falter and a soft place to fall.

###### IV

“I’m taller!” he exclaimed one day, a bit triumphantly.

“You’re standing on a rock,” she grumbled. Okay, so he was, but he would _still_ have been taller, even without it.

Well… it depended on whether horns counted, he supposed, but… by a sensible person’s count, definitely taller.

He leaned his forearms against the top of her shoulders, smirking down at her, victorious from his higher vantage point that was only _mostly_ because of the rock he was standing on.

She tilted her head up to look at him, her expression the very familiar cute-grumpy-face, but then… not. Her hand that had come up to push him away stroked softly against his arm instead and… it wasn’t a joke anymore but full of… weight.

And _want._

The light of the sunset hit her hair, lighting it up like a halo, and there was some defiance… some playfulness… some _Rayla_ … in her eyes, that he had missed so much he had forgotten how much it also used to utterly mess with his head-

Pfft. ‘Used to.’

His hand was in her hair, although he had made no conscious decision to. Her cheeks were flushed.

Her breath mingled with his, her lips so close.

She cocked her head, smirking just slightly. She really… couldn’t just _do_ that!

He couldn’t just look at that… and not… yeah-

That head-tilt, that look in her eyes that was…

Driving him crazy? Definitely.

 _Intentionally_ driving him crazy? …Maybe-plus?

Permission? Yes, it very much was that. And that was the most important really, when this was what he wanted, without question.

His hand clenched in her hair, around the back of her head, to pull her up and closer, closing the distance neither of them wanted.

He didn’t bother with gentle, because they both wanted this, and they might not have- This might be-

No.

It didn’t matter, that was the _point._

He wanted this… her… and she him.

So, _so_ much.

It was… complicated though, now, between them, and there were… boundaries to how far they could go when they weren’t a thing and he was still angry and she had still chosen like she had and-

And so they stepped away, and continued down the same valley trail they had followed before, and let their flushes fade and their breaths return.

And it was _still_ complicated.

But among the faded scratches and yellowed bruises at her jaw and neck, among old marks of violence… was a new mark… of affection.

And it was new, too, the way her hand slipped into his and she smiled up at him, definitely _up_ , because he was definitely taller-

Never mind.

It was intentional, was the point. Not habit or desperate longing for contact.

They both knew where they _wanted_ to go… and that the other wanted it too… they just had to get there.

###### V

  
The touches had started almost as soon as he found her that day, weeks back, and just kind of… continued and escalated, independently of whatever other dramatics happened between them, clashes of tempers… of lips.

It was unthinking, most of the time.

Natural.

Their hands, fingers intertwined, while they walked.

Her hand on his arm, his shoulder, his temple.

His hand on the small of her back, between her shoulder blades, against the nape of her neck, bared by her shorter hair.

In the evenings, their shoulders touching.

At night, curling into and around each other.

In the mornings, her cold feet pressing against his.

It was winter. Often foggy or windy. Always rough terrain. No one else to braid that pesky strand of hair that kept getting in her eyes.

Easy to defend those touches as practicality.

Except that today there was barely a breeze, clear skies and it was warm in a hollow in the hills, little purple flowers and green grass across the ground, even in the dead of winter. It was some geothermal anomaly here, hot springs under the earth, warm water trickling down the hillsides and gathering in small basins in the rocks.

They would have a nice, warm, and _very_ overdue bath later, but for now, they sat in warm air he hadn’t created, so he could relax too.

So there was no reason, really, why they should sit so close, or why her warm little hand had snuck under his cloak to find his, or why her head hit his shoulder and stayed there or why he snuggled his cheek against the top of her head.

Pfft.

He knew why.

And he closed his eyes and just was.

He was somehow more aware of things he didn’t usually think about, just because it had been such a very long time since the last time.

Like… smiling. At least, it had been a while since it had been so easy.

And… happiness? Yeah, he was sure that was what part of this warmth was.

And ease or… content? He wasn’t sure what to call it, but muscles that hadn’t properly relaxed in months were relaxing now, and it didn’t feel heavy but… light.

Lightness could pull you down? Apparently, that was a thing, when it was down towards _her_.

It was like infinite slowness when she tilted her head up, her eyes flicking down to his lips like… a question.

He pressed closer, in answer, but didn’t grip her, or pull at her to him, only pressed his lips softly to hers, an offer, not a demand.

She took it, _stayed_ in the touch, in the moment, stayed with _him,_ and answered his offer with her own, of softness and sweetness and vulnerability… and hardness and roughness and grumpy mornings and bad days and good.

Of a future.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked my experiment! It's a kinda different style, coming from being so word-count limited. More floaty and introspective, since I didn't have space for context or descriptions or extended dialogue.
> 
> If this 2K of post-TTM Rayllum drama wasn't enough for you, I wrote 30K of it, titled [Mess of Things](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26391169/chapters/64286191), wherein I actually deal with all the issues I only alluded to in this story, like Callum's anger and Rayla's self-worth issues.
> 
> As always, I love hearing your thoughts 🤗


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